OnePlus 6T Review from a OnePlus 3 User

OnePlus 6T is roughly a month old and a lot has already been said about it on the internet. I got mine on the first day itself and have tested it in and out in this last month. A solid OnePlus 3 user prior to this, it was in fact the first time I was not changing brands when changing my phone. To be honest, I was not nervous. I have always admired OnePlus as a company and the fact that they are driven by their customers. But how much of a big upgrade is the OnePlus 6T from the OnePlus 3? Well, let’s find out.

OnePlus 6T feels premium but also bigger

The very first time I got my hands on the OnePlus 6T, it felt way more premium than the OnePlus 3. Of course, glass feels more premium than aluminum any day. It brings more heft to it and overall the 6T is aesthetically more pleasing to look at and hold in hands. However, glass is also more likely to break than aluminum and that was the first thing that came into my mind. So, I quickly grabbed a case from Spigen although you do get one inside the box just in case you want to wear that out first. The case will not only protect it from scratches or drops but it will also give you a solid grip as the 6T is extremely slippery in hands. Atleast, the mirror black variant is slippery.

Besides this, the OnePlus 6T feels bigger in hands especially if you have small hands like me. Fortunately, getting used to the bigger footprint wasn’t that difficult. In fact, you will love the all new screen real estate with those tiny bezels and the waterdrop notch.

Alright, let’s talk about that notch now that I have mentioned it. In a nutshell, the waterdrop notch will not bother you at all. It doesn’t interfere in any sort of media consumption or gaming and it is probably the way to with the notches right now. What might bother some of you out there are the giant curves around the corners. OnePlus decided to go really curvy with the OnePlus 6T’s display and sometimes it cuts out some parts of an app or a game which can be annoying. For example, the exit button on PUBG is barely accessible because it so far up in the corner.

OnePlus didn’t go with the wireless charging even with their new material choices but that was not a big deal for me. Wireless charging is not a big deal here in India. But, they also didn’t give us the headphone jack. I am still trying to understand why though. In my opinion, the company is just following the trend. A trend which was originally set by Apple and it doesn’t matter how much you want the headphone jack, it will die. As a workaround? Go grab a pair of Bluetooth earphones from Amazon. Else, you can also go for OnePlus’s Type-C Bullets earphones. Here is our review for that.

OnePlus 6T is fast and I mean it

This whole moto of a crazy fast smartphone actually began with OnePlus 3 back in 2016. Fast forward to today, OnePlus is planning to put 10GB of RAM in a special edition OnePlus 6T. What?

Numbers aside, how fast OnePlus 6T
actually is? Is it drastically faster than the OnePlus 3? Well, it is not.

You see, we have reached that point today in the smartphone world where the slightest of better something is advertised as the selling feature of the device. OnePlus 6T is fast no doubt but you will not feel a crazy difference unless you put both the phones side by side.

That said, the performance here is top notch. Snapdragon 845 under the hood easily beats the Snapdragon 820 on OnePlus 3 coupled with the updated Adreno 630 GPU. What I mean by this is that apps will open up faster, games will load faster, and you will definitely notice some differences in the overall gaming performance. Snapdragon 845 isnot only more powerful, it is also better at saving power.

All this with the new OxygenOS9.0.5 baked with the latest Android 9.0 Pie probably gives the best Android experience on any smartphone. Yes, I am a big fan of stock android but OnePlus is really upping their game with the OxygenOS and with all those little features like the new gesture control, face unlock, Bluetooth audio tuner etc.it is clearly beating stock android at the moment at least for me.

OnePlus 6T has an insane battery life

If you ask me what is my favourite feature of OnePlus 6T? I would say the battery life and I am saying this after using the phone for over a month. Sure they removed the headphone jack, but OnePlus bumped up the battery from 3300 on OnePlus 6 to 3700 on the 6T. That’s about 12 percent more than the OnePlus 6 and about 23 percent more than OnePlus3. This, coupled with a Full HD Optic AMOLED display, OnePlus 6T is truly a champ when it comes to battery life.

Translating this to numbers, I was getting anywhere around 7.5 hours of SOT (Screen On Time) on an average day. There were days when I even got 8 hours of SOT with over 1.5 days of usage. On the other hand, on a typical heavy day with lots of photo editing, photo clicking and gaming, the 6T still got me through the day with over 8 hours of SOT.

Fast charging is here and it is one of the best in the market. OnePlus lost the battle with the name ‘Dash Charge’ but the technology is the same. My OnePlus 6T went from about 15 percent to 100percent in about 1 hour 15 minutes which is great given it has a 3700 mAh battery.

In-display fingerprint scanner works well but we still have face unlock

One of the most compelling features of the OnePlus 6T is the In-display fingerprint scanner. Now people had mixed feelings about this because the technology is still in the initial stages. For me, it worked great.

The in-display fingerprint scanner on the OnePlus 6T will not be as fast as your traditional physical sensor. It is not that accurate initially but feeding in the same finger twice solved this problem for me. I have always preferred the fingerprint scanner on the front of the display as it is more natural for me to unlock it with my thumb.

However, all is not sweet with this new fingerprint scanner. The problem is with the whole unlocking process. You can no longer just put your finger on the sensor to unlock the device. You will have to either power on the device and then unlock. Or, you can enable tap to wake up and then unlock. Yes, there is ‘Pick to Wake’ option under the Ambient Display but that is way more sensitive. It gets triggered way more often and since I am mad about the battery life, I kept it switched off.

That aside, the face unlock is still here and it is blazingly fast. Fun fact, I actually tested out the in-display fingerprint scanner for a good 20 days before I finally enabled the face unlock.

It doesn’t have the best camera but it is still great

OnePlus smartphones have never been the best when it comes to the optics. I mean Google and Apple is still leading the pile with their latest generation flagships. But OnePlus is not trying to be the best in the camera here. It is giving you a really good camera that can take beautiful shots outdoors and decent enough shots at night at an affordable price. I guess, that is a classic example of catering the masses right?

Nevertheless, we have a Dual 16-megapixel sensors at the back with f/1.7 aperture, OIS coupled with a 20-megapixel front camera again with f/1.7 aperture.

This camera setup can take some professional looking photos in the broad day light with accurate colours, good amount of details and dynamic range. It certainly likes to over-expose highlights in some situations. The HDR worked just fine although it can get a little too aggressive in tricky situations. Overall, the dual camera setup on the OnePlus 6T will not disappoint you at all unless you are into mobile photography and want the best camera out there. In that case, you are better off with a Pixel 3. Just saying!

Rear Camera - Outdoors

Rear Camera - Outdoors

Rear Camera - Macro

Rear Camera - Indoors

Rear Camera - Night

OnePlus Night Scape

OnePlus Night Scape vs Google Camera Night Sight

The portrait mode is a welcome improvement on the OnePlus 6T as the one on the OnePlus 6 still needed some final touches. OnePlus has also added ‘Night Scape’ feature on the software side where the camera takes a couple of seconds to capture a night or a low light shot. It was a hit or a miss during my testing as there were times it worked great and the other times it kind of messed it up making the whole photo look like an oil painting. I did try the Night Sight feature from Google Camera and it worked much better.

Coming to the front camera, the20-megapixel sensor that effectively take photos at 16-megapixels did a great job in my opinion. You don’t get anything fancy here as OnePlus didn’t really have much space in that tiny water-drop notch. Still, the pictures from the front camera came out really good and the portrait mode too worked a lot better than on the OnePlus 6.

So Who Should Actually Think Of Buying OnePlus 6T?

Now this becomes a tricky question when you have OnePlus 6 also available in the market. If it is not and you are coming from an older OnePlus device like the OnePlus 3 or OnePlus 5 or any other Android device, OnePlus 6T is the perfect upgrade. However, if you have OnePlus 6 available in your country and you can’t live without the headphone jack at the moment, go for the 6.

On the other hand, if you are already on OnePlus 6, I see no reason for you to upgrade to 6T as there is nothing worth spending that extra money that you don’t get on the 6T. Yes there is that in-display fingerprint scanner, but I would wait for the technology to pass on its initial phase.

For Apple users who are desperately wanting to switch to Android, OnePlus 6T is perhaps the safest step towards the Android world right now.